The Path Amazon Rejected(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
The Path Amazon Rejected
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/amazon-new-york-bill-de-blasio.html
15 comments
If Blasio wanted to fight for the deal he could have done more publicly instead of dealing with Amazon in the background. It's easy to wipe your hands clean of the deal when you take no strong stance. This piece just reads as "everyone is to blame but me."
Everyone knows that AOC was worried about the residents in her district getting priced out and moving away.
It's much less certain she could hold that seat if she was forced to listen to actual middle-class families instead of the low-income group she's representing now.
It's much less certain she could hold that seat if she was forced to listen to actual middle-class families instead of the low-income group she's representing now.
One of the great cons in American political discourse was convincing everyone that they were middle class.
Working poor @ 30k/year? Middle class.
Technological Individual Contributors @ 200k/year? Middle class.
Small business owner with $1M in assets? Middle class.
Nowadays, every politician can claim to be enacting policies for The Middle Class (TM), and they aren't obviously lying.
Working poor @ 30k/year? Middle class.
Technological Individual Contributors @ 200k/year? Middle class.
Small business owner with $1M in assets? Middle class.
Nowadays, every politician can claim to be enacting policies for The Middle Class (TM), and they aren't obviously lying.
Leaving aside the fact that different regions of the countries have different levels of comparative living costs and wealth...
The simple fact is that most people ARE middle-class. The bottom income 25-30% of working-age people contribute little to nothing to income-tax receipts. The top 5% in each region have enough assets to live comfortably but carry approximately 70% of the income tax burden. When you get to the top 1%, it's something like 46% of all income-tax receipts IIRC.
So....the folks in the middle carry the burden of the rest of that load.
FWIW, My numbers are approximate but close enough for this discussion. Since tax policy most directly affects people in the middle, it's very important to get it right. Since tax policy for the very rich affects things like investment and business formation, you don't want to tax those income generators to death. For the bottom, you want them to benefit from the programs in place so they can join the ranks of the middle class and pay something back.
But you assertion that nobody (or very few) is middle class anymore I think doesn't align with the facts.
The simple fact is that most people ARE middle-class. The bottom income 25-30% of working-age people contribute little to nothing to income-tax receipts. The top 5% in each region have enough assets to live comfortably but carry approximately 70% of the income tax burden. When you get to the top 1%, it's something like 46% of all income-tax receipts IIRC.
So....the folks in the middle carry the burden of the rest of that load.
FWIW, My numbers are approximate but close enough for this discussion. Since tax policy most directly affects people in the middle, it's very important to get it right. Since tax policy for the very rich affects things like investment and business formation, you don't want to tax those income generators to death. For the bottom, you want them to benefit from the programs in place so they can join the ranks of the middle class and pay something back.
But you assertion that nobody (or very few) is middle class anymore I think doesn't align with the facts.
instead of the low-income group she's representing now.
Google came up with this statistic for America: "The 2017 nominal median income per capita was $31,786."
Remember, this is NYC. Compared to Manhattan and Brooklyn, Queens is a distant third in the running.
That’s changing. People priced out of Manhattan and Brooklyn are gentrifying Queens and it’s causing grumbling among long time residents. People see what happened to Brooklyn and don’t want to see rents rise and neighborhoods change. Compared to most other places, most residents are renters in NYC and are exposed to pricing shifts in apartments.
That’s changing. People priced out of Manhattan and Brooklyn are gentrifying Queens and it’s causing grumbling among long time residents. People see what happened to Brooklyn and don’t want to see rents rise and neighborhoods change. Compared to most other places, most residents are renters in NYC and are exposed to pricing shifts in apartments.
Which district is this? The polls were pretty unanimous that New Yorkers and minorities were happy for Amazon to come along. AOC has her own political agenda which rejects corporate PACS etc. - don't equate that with what people in her district want.
I think the general consensus was that New Yorkers genuinely wanted Amazon to come to NYC but just didn't want the city and state to pay anything. The optics for subsidies were particularly horrible - the richest man in the world obtaining billions of dollars on behalf of a company with one of the largest market capitalizations in the world. How do you overcome that? Timing is everything and had Amazon's offer been on the table 4-5 years ago the outcome would probably have been different. As it is, since 2008 there's been a festering resentment of companies and while tech companies escaped a lot of that resentment resent issues with Facebook and Google have tarred the entire sector.
The tax break argument always seemed like a red herring to me. I live in NYC and was excited for Amazon coming but most of my friends were against it mostly out of a vague “stick it to the system” mentality. Somewhat ironic since most of these friends are in households earning in guessing around/in excess of 250k. Not one of these people gave a moment of thought about city or state budgets/deficits before and it is unlikely they will do so again.
> Amazon’s HQ2 bidding war exemplified that injustice. It’s time to end that economic warfare with a national solution that prevents corporations from pitting cities against one another.
That’s a truly odd statement from someone who directly participated in and then “won” that same bidding war.
That’s a truly odd statement from someone who directly participated in and then “won” that same bidding war.
What sort of jobs did Amazon have in mind for the locals in LIC (if any)? Were they considering providing tech training to hire them into software development roles? Or did they have in mind lower paying jobs? The bigger question is how can tech companies incorporate locals? What sort of training efforts can they provide to those without tech backgrounds? Would they train them in bootcamp style programs, to fail them at the leetcode interview phase, or is there pipeline that could incorporate non-tech folks into such roles?
There is bound to be a lot of trickle down effect. If there are high paying jobs, that will create low paying jobs (such as restaurants, services, construction etc.) in order to support high paying jobs. The only exception to this is when the housing supply doesn't deep up with jobs demand. But in LIC, with Queens in the vicinity, housing supply should not be a big issue for some time.
I don't understand why people who believe in economic "trickling" think it's local and doesn't cross state lines.
Amazon did the logical thing. It chose to NYC initially, not because it had some benevolent intent to improve the city's crumbling infra or create more jobs for its union workers, but because it fit their selection criteria nicely and their were tax benefits. The infra and job part would come regardless of which city Amazon chose and had nothing specific to Amazon's selection of NYC itself. Now that NYC is rescinding on the benefit part and increasingly it looks like the local & state govt are not able to control the public backlash, despite majority of New Yorkers supporting the deal (and the support for this deal is even larger among minorities), then pulling away is the natural outcome.
This is a competitive market and there are enough cities in US who are willing to bend backwards for 25k high paying jobs and prospects it offers (including becoming future tech hubs). NYC loss is bound to some other city's gains.
This is a competitive market and there are enough cities in US who are willing to bend backwards for 25k high paying jobs and prospects it offers (including becoming future tech hubs). NYC loss is bound to some other city's gains.